


(losing my gentleness) since the first young wound

by jurassicqueer (gaybirdkid)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Akatsuki - Freeform, Akatsuki Inuzuka Kiba, Akatsuki!Kiba, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Inuzuka Kiba, Blood Loss, Blood and Violence, Buried Alive, Caretaking, Carrying, Friendship, Gen, Major Character Injury, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 10:36:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20722817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaybirdkid/pseuds/jurassicqueer
Summary: Kiba never, ever forgets that he's a thirteen year old genin- not even a chuunin, though that rankles less and less every day- going up against trained shinobi and missing nin and all sorts of terrifying foes with just some soldier pills and poison knives.Sometimes the other members of the Akatsuki forget.OR: During his stint as a spy and S-ranked missing nin, Kiba is more than likely to get beat up. He's always surprised when his new team puts him back together.





	1. counting the insults alive in your ear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/gifts).
  * Inspired by [lost in the woods (and I wander alone)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853280) by [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat). 

> inspired by kat's amazing series- please go check it out. i read it every few weeks and it never gets old. i don't know how many chapters there will be, but hopefully most of the akatsuki will feature. kiba will have a different injury for each chapter because i love that sweet, sweet whump.
> 
> chapter and work title from "ancestral memory"  
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150296/ancestral-memory

Kiba wants to blame Deidara- wants to blame him, or Hidan- because it’ll make him feel like it’s less his fault, but he can’t. The truth of the matter is that he saw Deidara’s open back and Hidan’s hamstrung leg, muscles spilling out of the gash, and he moved before he thought it through. Deidara didn’t know the bladed ninja wire was coming and Hidan wouldn’t be able to move in time.

So, no- Kiba can only blame himself; can only understand that, in the few moments he has to watch the glint of the wire curve towards him, he’s too slow and too unskilled and likely to die. He deflects one blade, knocks the other down, and then feels the cold-hot burn of something slicing through his neck.

Blood spurts, hot and startling against his lower jaw, but he curls a hand around the wire and yanks hard enough to pull the other ninja off balance. He launches himself forward and rolls under a swinging kick, explodes from all fours and drives his small tanto into the underside of the shinobi’s chin. 

He drops, and Kiba stumbles back a little, dizzy from the blood still spilling down his neck. He presses a hand to it and barely registers the fuzzy pain from the pressure. Everything is going washed out and grey in a really, really bad way, but Kiba still turns and takes a few unsteady steps back towards his teammates.

He blinks and the world tilts too fast, sky becoming ground and trees sitting at odd angles, and blinks again to see Deidara’s dirt streaked face over him. Hands jostle him, scoop him up, and there’s a harsher pressure against his neck. He wonders where the other shinobi that were attacking them went.

“Stupid puppy, stupid idiot-” Deidara is snarling, and Kiba blinks slowly at him. It’s too hard to focus, but Kiba knows he smells fear.

“Do you know any medical jutsu?” Hidan asks, voice a little rushed, and Kiba opens his mouth to ask who’s hurt- and coughs on the blood in his throat. Where’s that coming from? Did he bite his tongue? He inhales roughly, tastes the tacky smear of blood in the back of his throat and wheezes a little around it. The hand against his neck presses tighter and he winces at the pain.

“You deserve that, un!” Deidara hisses, hunching over Kiba a little more as his eyes flick down to his neck and then back to his face. “Konan is going to _ kill us _if you die, brat!”

Kiba wants to protest, tell Deidara he obviously didn’t _ want _to take a serrated ninja wire to the fucking neck, but he can’t really do much more than gurgle around the blood that’s slowly coating his throat.

There’s a prickle, a hum of unpracticed healing jutsu against the wound, and Kiba coughs at the tickle it sends up and down the inside of his throat. Hidan’s face appears next to Deidara’s and a hand drops into his hair, gentler than he expects.

“That’s what you get for taking hits.” Hidan says, tries to make it biting, but his brows are tight over his nose and Kiba can just barely smell the concern and uncertainty over the stench of his own blood. He wants to protest- say that Deidara would have lost his head if he didn’t move, but there’s a wash of jagged coolness across his neck, and Kiba can finally inhale without swallowing around blood.

“Shut the fuck up.” He manages, hoarse and wet, and smells relief from the other two. He’s still bleeding- his cloak collar and shoulder soaked by now- but it’s slowed, and he’s not bleeding into his airway anymore. His limbs feel a little less distant

“We’re going to have to find a medic nin that’ll treat you, un.” Deidara says, digging out a wad of bandages and pressing them to Kiba’s neck. He flattens them with a few practiced wraps of cloth. A hand on the back of his skull holds him steady. “I barely closed it, you won’t make it back to Sasori like this.”

Kiba goes to nod and then rethinks it; his neck is tender and aching. He’d bet money on it being bruised and damaged straight through to where it nicked his trachea. He’s lucky Deidara’s picked up even the basics of healing, or he’d probably be dead by now.

“I’ll take him on my back.” Hidan says, pulling his cloak the rest of the way open and knotting the sleeves over his shoulders. Kiba wants to protest at the idea of being carried but his head is still woozy and thick from the blood loss, and he honestly thinks he’ll tip right over if he tries to stand.

It takes some maneuvering and a lot of swearing, but Deidara and Hidan manage to get him from the ground to situated in the pseudo-carrier of Hidan’s cloak. His skin is too hot against Kiba’s face and he smells strongly of sweat, blood, and cut stone, but it feels good to go limp and rest against him. 

“We’ll try the village an hour from here.” He hears Deidara say, hears the rustle of clothes and sandals scuffing dirt. Hidan’s gait is long and easy as they start walking and it lulls him into a half-doze. “The puppy’s too small to have lost all that blood, un.”

“He took that hit for you.” Hidan says, and it’s not quite accusing, but-

“If you had watched my back, he wouldn’t have _ had to.” _Deidara spits, always too easy to rile, and Kiba gives a short growl like his mother’s ninken would use to chastise him. It tears at this throat but manages to shut the other two up.

“Just walk, dickheads.” Kiba mumbles, tucking his arms over his chest and going a little more limp. The other two are quiet for a few blessed moments before a hand smooths some of his hair back from his face.

“Brat.” Deidara says, but it’s almost fond.


	2. opening the narrow sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who commented!! this is definitely a fun little entertainment thing for myself, so i dunno when ill update or when thisll finish, but i appreciate all of the kudos and love!!! :)
> 
> i hid a little joke in here, so tell me if you find it.
> 
> title from "ancestral memory" again  
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150296/ancestral-memory

Kiba is so used to Deidara being unique, unusual, downright _ strange _in his jutsu that he sometimes forgets other people have detonation and bomb jutsus, too. Sometimes he forgets that not every fight is equal or better odds when it’s two Akatsuki against whole squads of shinobi.

“Another four coming from the southwest-” Kiba snaps, barely hearing his own words from over the ringing in his ears. He flings himself low and rips through the meat of a thigh with a tanto, blood spraying his face and coat as an artery severs like an overcooked noodle. The ninja drops with a choked noise and Kiba rolls, dodges a swipe with a kunai and jab of doton, and comes up back to back with Kakuzu.

“I’ve lost a mask.” He snarls, and Kiba crouches low and rolls his shoulders. The ninja surrounding them hold a perimeter several yards back- there’s two, eight, twelve still standing, and four on the way. 

“The rendezvous is only a twenty minute hike from here.” Kiba says, offers the older man- who snorts and shakes his head, threads rippling and spilling onto the ground like living things.

“Pein will be furious if we give up the base’s location.” Kakuzu says. He flashes his teeth in a snarl that any Inuzuka would be proud of and blurs his hands through a set of seals Kiba doesn’t recognize.

“Take out as many as you can- don’t bother killing, just incapacitate.” He says, and throws himself forward without waiting for a response.

Kiba turns his focus to the ninja in front of him and leaps into action. He scatters a handful of small smoke bombs with a hand and follows with a hail of kunai, sending a kuton after to ignite the flash-bomb tags. The two or three caught in it hit cry out, and Kiba spring-boards off a rock in the dusty clearing and slams into the kunoichi racing towards him.

There’s an _ oomph _of air leaving her body, a choked noise, and Kiba uses her shoulder to fling himself up and over her falling body, clearing the second shinobi behind her. He lands heavily on the balls of his feet and instantly dodges again, rolling from a vicious kuton and shuriken combo.

For just a second Kiba catches sight of Kakuzu on the other side of the clearing; outlined against the scraggly trees and endless horizon, he looks horrific in a way Kiba is quickly finding comforting. His threads whip and shred any shinobi that get close enough, and his wind, fire and water masks are all engaging the enemy.

The wind shifts, and Kiba drops flat to his belly to avoid the blow from behind. He rolls and kicks out a knee, drives up and forwards with a poisoned kunai before the ninja can move away. More blood to the face, and Kiba wipes his nose and mouth clean as he stumbles to his feet in time to smell a new scent on the wind.

There’s smoke and ash, wrapped up in another person, and lighting powder, struck matches, freshly turned dirt- and Kiba whirls with a growl, locking eyes with one of the new shinobi to arrive. He blanches, goes white below his hitai-ate, but his hands don’t waver as he lights a fuse and leaps clear.

“Kakuzu-” Kiba yells, bounding back several yards, but that’s all he manages to get out. There’s a horrible _ boom boom boom _from below the earth, and the ground shakes and cracks open. Kiba doesn’t have time to leap clear again before there’s a spray of rocks and dirt, a bone-breaking impact, and then nothing but darkness.

Kiba blinks his eyes open and then squeezes them shut again. He whines from behind clenched teeth, tastes blood on his tongue and gasps a little through the horrible pressure on his chest. It’s sharp and heavy, rocks and dirt pressing in on broken ribs and maybe a punctured lung, and Kiba can barely inhale at all before the pain gets too much.

He scrabbles a little, nails scraping rock, and chokes as a shift drives the air right out of him. The debris is too tightly packed around him, and there’s too much weight; it’s everything and more that Deidara warned him about concerning bombs underground.

_ You blow shit up underground, un, and you create a vacuum- _Kiba remembers, can almost hear around the desperate hammering of his heart in his ears- _all the dirt, rock, sand, water- whatever, it all gets dragged right back in, and harder than before. You don’t want to be under when that fuse goes off. _

Of course, Deidara was too skilled to allow any of his teammates to get caught in a scenario like that; even Hidan, who faced the majority of his ire, was never at risk of being buried alive. Despite being trigger happy, Deidara was always careful and specific.

Apparently, the shinobi aren’t interested in taking them alive.

Kiba hiccups around the force on all sides and thanks the spirits and all the gods he has the small pocket of air around his head. Anything less, and his head would look like the overripe melons that burst on the ground when they drop from the tree. Less than pleasant.

“Kaku-” Kiba calls out, or tries to. His voice comes out as little more than a wheeze. All he gets for his trouble is dust in his mouth and the slowly growing fear that he’s going to die.

He wriggles more, full-bodied this time because his momma did _ not _ raise a quitter, and squeaks when one of his lower ribs breaks with a _ snap _and flare of pain. His vision gets hazy and dark for a few long moments, and even though breathing is only fire in his chest and a fight against the earth, Kiba tries to focus.

He’s not too skilled with doton yet, still working out the finer kinks, but maybe if he can shift the rocks- or push himself up, anything-

And the dirt above him shifts, letting in the glaring sunlight.

“-going to skin you alive and _ wear you, _ fucking _ brat-” _Kakuzu snarls, eyes locking onto Kiba with an intensity that a sane person would find terrifying. As is, Kiba does his best to smile at Kakuzu with a mouth full of blood and too-sharp teeth. 

His face softens a little, or gets less tight, and the earth shifts and roils around him. The pressure on Kiba’s ribs and back finally abates as the ground beneath him lifts, pushing him towards the surface and his teammate.

Once he’s free Kiba sprawls on his back and wheezes around the pain in his chest. The lack of pressure feels like heaven, but now that he can inhale fully all of his broken ribs make themselves loudly known- as well as the ripping pain of a perforated lung. 

“It’s like babysitting an infant.” Kakuzu spits, but green glowing hands skate his chest, hover over his wet, shaky breaths until the pain abates a little. Then he’s hauling Kiba to his feet.

“You can make it to the base.” He says, voice stern and full of conviction, and Kiba takes a careful breath and fishes out a chakra pill.

“As long as they don’t pull that again, I’ll live.” He says, tosses back the pill and grimaces at the wash of ice through his veins. Kakuzu watches him for a long moment, mouth in a tight line and eyes unreadable, until Kiba squints suspiciously at him.

“What is it-” He starts to ask, backs away a little, before Kakuzu’s face splits into an angry frown and he’s swept up into his teammates arms. Kiba goes very, very still.

“Hold on. We need to move fast, and you’re a liability right now.” Kakuzu grumbles testily, already leaping clear of the wrecked clearing, but his arms are secure around Kiba.

Kiba hides his smile in the collar of his cloak and buries his disbelief. Who knew Kakuzu was a mother hen about things other than money?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you notice my little joke? ;)

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @kukurosaki


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